


Charmed

by utsu



Category: Naruto
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Gen, Humor, Post-Naruto Time Skip | Naruto Shippuden, tomfoolery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-12
Updated: 2016-12-12
Packaged: 2018-09-08 05:35:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8832412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/utsu/pseuds/utsu
Summary: “No,” Boruto gasped, eyes widening with amusement. Himawari’s reflected his joy, though hers were far more sincere and far less amused.“Yes!” She sighed, bringing the kunai back to cradle it against her chest. “He has surprisingly good taste in charms.”“Uncle Sasuke?”





	

“Isn’t it cute?” Himawari asked, lifting her kunai up between them to flaunt the dangling charm looped through the handle. Boruto frowned, studying the decoration. It was a white cat, no larger than a grape, but it seemed distracting and impractical all the same. He cast a weary glance in Himawari’s direction, even as he stayed bent over close enough to study the accessory with due attention. She beamed, eyes squinted shut with joy. His frown grew more pronounced.

“Cute?” He asked, straightening back to his full height. He lifted a hand to scratch idly at a sideburn, watchful of changes in Himawari’s expression. She was decidedly...particular about her toys. Especially if he happened to accidentally ruin them—he remembered the day of her Byakugan’s awakening and felt chills race over his skin.

Yeah, he’d learned at a very young age to be careful with Himawari and her toys.

“Yeah!” She chirped, and when her eyes slowly opened Boruto was privately relieved that they were still a glistening blue. “You’ll never guess who gave it to me.”

Boruto hummed, and entertained the thought for a moment. His first inclination was obvious; it was no secret that their Aunt Hanabi had a penchant for adding charms to her own weaponry. That habit of hers was almost as well-known as her proclivity for relentless lethality. Almost.

Any other time, and he would’ve known Aunt Hanabi to be responsible. But Himawari had asked him to _guess_ , without even really asking, but he knew her well enough to see through her. What was it Uncle Kakashi was always telling them? Look underneath the underneath? Or something?

Internally, Boruto groaned. If it wasn’t the obvious choice, then it really could have been anyone. They had a lot of aunts and uncles, both within the walls of Konoha and outside of it. Such was the spread of their parents’ influence. Boruto’s right eye twitched as the little toy cat face mocked him, spinning idly while still suspended in the air between them.

“I don’t know, Himawari.”

Himawari didn’t even hesitate. She was not going to let him off that easily. “Guess!”

Boruto heard muffled laughter over his shoulder and scowled, knowing that his mother was laughing at his expense. He groaned aloud this time, muttering a quiet, “Mom, you’re not helping.”

Himawari gazed at him, smirking. “It’s _so_ obvious, brother.”

“Clearly not!” He snapped, exasperated. He crossed his arms over his chest, lip jutting out slightly in what was most certainly not a _pout_. It was an expression often found on their father’s face whenever Hinata asked him something he actually had to critically think about—and which he never really knew. “Dad wouldn’t know the answer either.”

“Actually, he might,” Himawari hinted, her smirk turning sharp. Boruto blinked at her, then flicked his eyes back to the charm. A tiny, dainty white cat, threaded with red twine.

Red twine. A cat.

“ _No_ ,” Boruto gasped, eyes widening with amusement. Himawari’s reflected his joy, though hers were far more sincere and far less amused.

“Yes!” She sighed, bringing the kunai back to cradle it against her chest. “He has surprisingly good taste in charms.”

“Uncle _Sasuke_?” 

Boruto gasped, and the laughter spilled out of him without his control. He clutched at his stomach and tears formed in the corners of his eyes, air bubbling out of him in curls and waves. He didn’t notice the way that Himawari straightened, suddenly, in the way she always did when she sensed a loved one in her range, turning unconsciously in their direction. He didn’t notice the way that Hinata sighed, a clear warning of impending doom, or the scent of sudden lightning trailing through the air.

He laughed, and when he straightened back up and wiped at the tears in his eyes, he saw that he had made a mistake. Himawari’s smile was a promise and a threat, and her expression as a whole was far too docile for his well-being. She twirled the kunai around her finger, the charm trailing along with it, and said, “Big mistake, brother.”

Boruto opened his mouth to apologize, still grinning, barely repentant, when he _finally_ felt the presence just outside of their front gate. His spine snapped straight, and he swallowed in the same moment that Himawari began to skip past him, still spinning that kunai and its ridiculous charm with effortless calm.

She patted his shoulder once in passing, and this time she was the one laughing.

“I could tell him to go easy on you,” she said, “He’d probably even listen to me, but I’m not gonna. I love my new charm, and you were dumb and laughed at it. Poor form.”

Boruto turned to watch her head towards the door, closer to the presence quietly bristling in spikes of jaded electricity just a step outside of their yard. Boruto swallowed again, but it was rough; his mouth was dry. Hinata had turned to rest the small of her back against the counter, arms crossed loftily over her chest. She cast him a sympathetic glance, but there was unabashed humor in her soft gaze, and Boruto could do nothing about it.

He hated that he knew Himawari was right, too. If she asked Sasuke to go easy on him, he probably would.

(Just slightly, though, and in a way that only he would even be able to detect.)

Sasuke had a soft spot a village wide for Himawari, a culmination of reasons behind it, though Boruto suspected that Himawari’s not-so-secret crush on Sarada greatly helped her case, too.

“You are the worst,” he said without rancor, shoulders sagging. “Aren’t siblings supposed to protect each other?”

Himawari paused with her free hand on the doorframe, her laughter like wind chimes, eyes alight with joy.

She said, “You’re so _dramatic_ , brother.”

“Dramatic!”

“I’m sure uncle Sasuke will change your mind about cat charms,” Himawari continued on blithely, tugging her sandals up over her heels. The words were equal parts suggestion and threat, and Boruto felt personally attacked. He pursed his lips, fighting the urge to smile even then. He didn’t like backing down from challenges—something he’d inherited genetically from his father, probably. Or just learned by a lifetime of examples.

“And if he won’t…” Himawari continued, straightening once her sandals were on and comfortable. She slid the front door open and Boruto tilted his head a little to catch a glimpse of their brooding uncle by the gate, unsurprised to find him staring directly at Boruto as though he himself had the Byakugan and knew Boruto’s exact position, down to his precise coordinates. Boruto lifted a weak hand to wave and one of Sasuke’s elegant eyebrows lifted in promise of retribution.

Embarrassing as it was, this was not the first time that Boruto had felt cowed by his uncle’s eyebrow. He offered a bashful grin instead, and Himawari glanced over her shoulder and Boruto felt pinned in place. His mother sighed, exasperated and weary even as she walked through the tension between her children to offer a quiet greeting to Sasuke. He returned it with a greeting equally soft, surprising in its tenor, though not enough for Boruto to take his eyes from his younger sister.

“If Uncle Sasuke won’t, well.” And here, Himawari grinned, sharp enough to _cut_. “Maybe I _will_.”

And then she flitted through the doorway, calling a farewell to Hinata and reaching out the moment she was at Sasuke’s side to twine their fingers together and start leading him to their favorite training area. Sasuke was quick enough that he could’ve easily dodged her hand, and stingy enough that he could’ve purposefully followed after Himawari at his own pace.

He did neither of those things. It was a well-kept secret between their two families that Uchiha Sasuke was a _hand-holder_ , and that Sarada and Himawari had particular power over him in this regard. So he allowed Himawari to tug him along, and Boruto didn’t miss the way his sharp eyes softened ever so slightly in response. He did, however, cast a last glance over his shoulder to pin Boruto into place, and his eyes had always been his preferred method for communication. 

Boruto’s right eye twitched. He understood the promise in them.

And the threat.

“Man,” he groaned, throwing himself down in the nearest chair. Things had been so much easier when he was just a kid and he didn’t really understand subtle things like Sasuke speaking with his eyes, and Himawari’s proclivity for smiling threats. He was still only a teenager, almost an adult, but everything seemed so much sharper now.

He let his forehead thump against the table dramatically, even as Hinata came back in the room and rubbed his back to soothe him, the same way she had when he was a child. When she moved away, he rose to rest his chin in his palm, feeling Himawari and Sasuke’s chakra moving away from them. Himawari’s fluttered and pulsed, as lively and bright as the revolving sun. Next to her, Sasuke’s was an icy chill of absent electricity, a depthless current humming under indecipherable surfaces. Complete opposites.

“It’s just a charm!” He pleaded, turning to watch Hinata continue making their lunches. “I mean, I know to be careful about that stuff with Himawari, but Uncle _Sasuke?_ Him _too_?”

Hinata muffled her quiet laughter, glancing over her shoulder to smile kindly at him.

“Sasuke-kun loves cats.”

“I know,” Boruto blew air up at his bangs, pursing his lips. “ _Everyone_ knows.”

“He’s very fond of you and Himawari.”

“I know,” Boruto repeated, sullen but pleased.

Hinata grinned at him, sly in a way that made him focus.

“Boruto, darling,” she began, even as she reached for a knife bigger than her forearm. “If you want a charm, too, you should just ask him.”

“What!” Boruto burst, blinking rapidly at her. “I don’t want a charm! They’re distracting, they get in the way.”

Even as he said it, and Hinata cast him a knowing glance, he knew the words weren’t entirely true. Hanabi’s accuracy was lethal, and Himawari had managed to cut Sasuke’s sleeve with a charm-ridden kunai just the other day. Boruto _knew_ that their precision and efficiency made the charms just another part of the weaponry, but he hated admitting it.

He’d tried using one of Himawari’s kunai before—with her permission! He tried not to repeat disastrous mistakes _twice_ —and he had found himself detrimentally distracted with the accessory. He’d been too proud at the time to ask Himawari for pointers, and had struggled all afternoon with the extra weight of the weapon, and the way the charm skimmed his wrist. It was so _distracting_.

His dad and Sasuke didn’t use charms, though Himawari _had_ successfully gotten through to Grandpa Kakashi, and he was as efficient as they came. He, very obviously, enjoyed dog charms. Boruto wasn’t exactly _opposed_ to the accessories themselves, he just didn’t have the skill, and he didn’t actually _want_ anything on his weapons. There was something gross about infantilizing a weapon, he thought; something that made those who chose to do so even more dangerous, too.

It was all fun and games until he thought too closely about children wielding weapons long enough to familiarize them with trinkets.

But theirs was a different world than most, a dangerous world, one that needed protecting. They were still trying to shift the tides, to change until violence wasn’t the means to the peaceful times they all so desperately wanted. They were still trying. But until then…

Boruto watched his mother move idly around the kitchen, that huge knife often curled in her elegant fingers. He thought about charms and kunai, about Sasuke out there probably teaching Himawari lethal tricks she’d later perfect on _Boruto_ , damn it, and how Sasuke had started off as his master alone.

He smiled, though. He loved his sister dearly, more than anyone, and he wanted to protect her. He wanted her to protect _herself_ —and if that meant sharing with her all that he learned, and all those that had taught him, too, then he would do so gladly. If it meant becoming her guinea pig for traps and tricks, that was fine, too.

Because he wasn’t going to fall behind. He was strong, too.

And he had training with _Sakura_ that evening.

Himawari was in for a few surprises of her own.

“Mom?” He asked, and Hinata turned to him with an expression of open warmth, so much so that it was impossible to feel any way but totally loved.

“Yes?”

He rested his cheek in his hand, tilting his head to watch his mother watch him.

“How does Auntie Sakura-chan feel about charms?”

And his warm, gentle mother’s smile shifted into something that put Himawari’s cutting smirk to _shame_.


End file.
